


a plea for tenderness

by plastics



Category: South Park
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Fake Dating, High School, M/M, Obliviousness, Pining, “Fake” Dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/pseuds/plastics
Summary: “Then what is it?”“I don’t know. But don’t you, like… feel different? At all?”
Relationships: Craig Tucker/Tweek Tweak
Comments: 17
Kudos: 76
Collections: pine4pine 2020





	a plea for tenderness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Enisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enisy/gifts).



> Re: the underage and adolescent sexuality warnings/tag: The characters are fourteen in this fic, which deals with sexual awakenings. That said, while there is a degree of vulgarity, this is not an erotic story.

At some point midway through eighth grade, mornings went from being miserable but bearable to impossible, like waking up every day having been concreted over in the middle of the night—it’d hardly have been the weirdest thing to happen in South Park—but it was all natural, so Craig did the natural thing in response, which was closing his eyes again.

He saw the inside of the principal's office in the following semester, mostly for truancy, but then June came without any followthrough on the threat of summer school and Craig settled into the better part of three months sleeping twelve hours a day, interrupted occasionally by eating or wandering aimlessly around town. People could make a life of that shit. People do, in this town.

Then it was August again.

Craig knew, as the Red Racer theme dragged him awake, that he’d need to change his alarm if he ever wanted to be able to watch the show again without getting pissed off by pure association. He didn’t normally remember his dreams but the frustration clung sometimes, a dull anger that did little to chase the heaviness out of him. He was pretty sure he’s hard, too, but a moment’s analysis proved that his boxers were still dry.

A few heavy blinks later, and his door rattled. “For the love of— Do not lock your door if you’re not going to be able to get yourself up, I’m not doing this shit with you again, Craig!”

“Fuck off,” Craig responded, voice cracking.

His mom snapped something back at him, but Craig tuned back out. The clock on his phone read 7:28. It took twelve minutes to walk to school, and another five once inside South Park High to get to his desk. At the latest, he needed to leave within the next fifteen minutes.

Doable.

Craig sat up, rubbed at his eyes like he could massage his brain through them. He debated putting on pants to cross the hallway into the bathroom. 7:31. He debated not going to the bathroom, imaging the stinging mint gum his mom kept in her purse and getting out of whatever first-day lectures awaited him in homeroom. He thought about the disgusting animals that he went to school with, and went to the bathroom.

His door was cracked open by the time he returned to it, and Craig couldn’t muster up any real surprise when he saw Tweek sitting at the edge of his freshly-made bed. Tweek, as always, looked both exhausted and a more than a little wild around the eyes, his face twitching as it tried to settle into an appropriate greeting.

Sometimes it got to Craig that this was what comfortable looked like on Tweek, but that generosity only came out after noon—later, if they had the time, so late it felt like they were the only two left—so instead he said, “What are you doing here?”

“Your parents let me in.”

“They let you into my room?”

“Don’t be an asshole, Craig.” Tweek sat up straight and held out the thermos in his left hand. “I brought coffee!” 

Craig grimaced. If asked, Craig would say that coffee was a poor attempt at lubricating square pegs into round holes at best and a personality substitute at worst. If his mind was read, one could know that the bitterness was too much for him, same as he hated everything else that was too sweet, spicy, or sour. But the Tweaks were nothing if not dedicated to finding ways to up people’s caffeine intake, and Tweek had a way of disguising two shots of espresso within ten times the amount of milk. 

Craig took the thermos and gulped down a mouthful before setting it down on top of his dresser. He still wouldn’t commit to it making any difference, but he could keep it down and it was an alright-enough compromise.

The room was silent, and Craig appreciated these final moments of silence, or at least the ambient sound of not having to listen, until Tweek finally broke and asked, “Doesn’t it feel different?”

“Doesn’t what feel different?”

“Like, school. This year. Isn’t that how things are supposed to go? Like, oh, it’s big time now, things are happening, the rest of our future spread out in front of us. Whatever.”

“Why would it?” Craig asked, picking through his shirts. By the final bell, it was going to hot as it ever was, but felt sacrilegious to tarnish what he wore in freedom and in light with the heavy cologne-and-farmboy-shit air at school. “Everything is run by the same idiots. We’re still in the same town. All high school means is that we’re on the bottom of the food chain again.”

Tweek blanched, his free hand clenching in Craig’s comforter. “Oh god. Do you remember sixth grade? For all of elementary school we thought they were the sociopaths, and then _we_ were the sixth graders and they were _eighth_ graders—you didn’t just shower, did you?”

“What?” The jeans Craig was wiggling into were new and uncomfortable. His old ones didn’t fit anymore.

“Your hair isn’t even wet! Are you just going to school like that? That’s disgusting.”

“I shower at night.” Tweek still grimaced, and Craig rolled his eyes, pulled on a suitably neutral shirt, then pulled Tweek off his bed and into his chest.

“What are you doing—”

“Breathe,” Craig commanded, and when he felt Tweek inhale, he asked, “Do I smell?”

“... No. But it’s still weird. I shower four times a day,” Tweek said, pulling back, his eyes shifty.

“I’m sure you do, pervert.”

Tweek’s face stained red as his face twisted in protest once again, although he didn’t say anything. Something hot and smug curled contently in Craig’s chest as he took in the sight—another habit, but this time his eyes caught on the undone buttons, the flashes of skin in the gaps.

“Jesus, Tweek,” Craig sighed as he plucked at the mismatched buttons, revealing more skin before tucking it back away. Even in the dying hours of summer, Tweek was still deathly pale, his chest clammy and smooth when Craig’s fingers accidentally brushed against it. Idly, Craig wondered why Tweek doesn’t just wear a normal shirt, or an undershirt at least. He can still hear the usual responses, _I get hot, I like this shirt, I don’t want to have to change before going to work, my mom got it for me, I hate shopping for new clothes—_

“You know, it’d probably be easier to do things yourself at Northern Colorado or whatever,” Craig says

“God. I know,” Tweek admits, barely breathing beneath Craig’s hands, practically stone still except for the faint tremor he always has. He admits, “It’s not actually that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know. But don’t you, like… feel different? At all?” Tweek asks, voice breaking even as he stares Craig down as best he can, one eyelid already twitching. Craig feels a flash of annoyance even as his fingers flash hot. He’d finished with the buttons but is still holding the hem of Tweek’s shirt. He drops it.

He exhales and asks again, this time as a genuine question, “Why would I feel different?” 

“Ugh. Fuck. I _just_ said I didn’t know! You’re right. It’s still just South Park.” Then Tweek stepped away from Craig and the bubble they’d formed in the middle of his room. He picked up a backpack that Craig hadn’t noticed sitting at the foot of his bed. “Find some socks, we’re already late and that is _not_ the impression I’m looking to make this year.” 

They made it out the door later than Craig’s estimate, but he had long legs and Tweek had a frantic energy that seemed to make anything short of a sprint painful for him most of the time.

Silence overtook them both again but the irritation stayed, like sand under Craig’s skin. _Different._ What would be different? He glanced at Tweek out of the corner of his eye, the same messy blond hair, the same twitchy eyes that kept catching Craig then looking back away, the same nervous pinches of thin, pink lips.

Ninety percent of the time, Craig long believed, if something was happening in South Park, addressing it just made it worse. Being friends or whatever with Tweek, however, threw a wrench in that philosophy. Something left festering in Tweek tended to lead to a full infection. But there wasn’t much to be done about something Tweek couldn’t even articulate yet—that was the opposite problem from most of the time, anyway. 

After a minute, Tweek’s fingers brushed Craig’s hand. Then a second time. “Christ, your fingers are cold,” Craig complained, and then took Tweek’s hand in his own. Another habit; people liked to gossip about summer developments, and early talk of a Craig and Tweek Breakup had the ability to disrupt an already fragile ecosystem. 

It’s nice on its own, too, palm to palm. A few more weeks, it’ll be winter, and they—or at least Craig—will be back to gloves and hats and winter coats.

* * *

By the end of September, a standard South Park school year settled into place.

Firstly, whatever hope Tweek seemed to be carrying into a new year and fresh start died a quick, brutal death. Craig didn’t like school. He didn’t respect it. What he refused to do in terms of homework, classwork, or respect of authority was made up for by his test score, and South Park had too many fuckups to be chasing after a mere asshole like Craig.

Tweek was one of those fuckups. It drove Craig crazy to watch—teachers fucking with him, administration not being able to do their jobs, his own parents’ sabotage. Even without the juniors or seniors giving a fuck about their existence, another level of miserable, hunted paranoia always managed to creep back and overthrow whatever minor progress might be made while they’re away from that place.

Secondly, the sucking black hole that was Stan and those guys once again twisted the entire school into controversy. The instigating action this time being that Wendy let Stan fingering her in health class, which Craig found fundamentally impossible to believe. 

“It’s true!” Clyde insists. “I was there, and his hands were, like—”

“Stan Marsh. Who vomited countless times on her just a few short years ago. Her, being Wendy fucking Testaberger,” Craig said. They were eating lunch in an abandoned hallway Clyde’s sister had bestowed onto them in what Craig thought was an attempt to avoid all this bullshit. 

Token, with a practiced sort of casualness, lifted a shoulder. “Things change. People change.”

Soon, Craig thought, he would be able to drive, and he would leave campus for lunch, and he would leave everyone else here to starve. Craig shoved the last of his cooling fries into his mouth and said, “Oh, and you’re some sort of Testaberger expert after all these years, right, Token?”

“No!” Token said with the sort of posture that screamed he was banking on no one being able to tell he was blushing, “but Nicole and I have, you know, done stuff. It’s not impossible they have.”

 _“Stuff?”_ Clyde echoed, leaning forward.

“Bullshit,” Craig repeated, louder.

“Why does it have to be bullshit? Just because you and Tweek are waiting for marriage—”

“I’ve done stuff,” Tweek interrupted, and that low-burning annoyance flared hotter as he turned to look at Tweek.

“Really? Because I haven’t,” he said, ignoring the chortles coming out of Clyde as he closely watched Tweek’s eyes jump from him to Token and back to him again.

“I-It was before we got together.”

“We got together in fourth grade, Tweek.”

“Yeah, well…!” Craig watched a nervous shutter work its way through Tweek’s whole body before he got out, “I was at an entrepreneurial camp with my family the summer before and this other kid’s family also had a coffee shop and we—”

“Did you let him fingerblast you in grinding class?” Clyde sneered, grinning widely and Craig reflexively kicked out and let his foot connect with whatever part of Clyde it hit first, which turned out to be his wrist. A bubble of guilt rose up as Clyde’s face grew red and his eyes welled up as he said _That really hurt_ and _You can’t just hit people, Craig!_ but for the most part, he was just happy the conversation was over.

* * *

As usual, the whole Wet and Wild Times with Wendy thing reached its climax then disappeared from the public consciousness within a week.

Unusually, Craig couldn’t get that lunchtime conversation out of his head. He thought he could, except _Tweek_ kept acting weird and standoffish about it. The first part was normal. The second part, Tweek not being so eager to air every worry worming through his head, was such a strong deviation from normal that when Tweek finally texted him **I hate this shut will you please od my algebra hw** late, Craig didn’t even bother starting the barter with a no.

It was late, but the Tucker household didn’t really do curfews, and it wouldn’t have mattered for Tweek anyway. When he finally let himself in Craig’s room, he announced, “Your mom told me to do that so we wouldn’t traumatize Tricia.”

“Jesus Christ,” Craig replied. “Yeah, two guys in a bedroom, she’s never seen that one before.”

Tweek rolled his eyes, but it annoyed Craig—it felt more like an _at_ than a _with,_ although Craig couldn’t even really justify that within his own head. It was the sort of thing Clyde would say when they’re fighting, not Craig. 

Are they fighting?

Tweek dropped into Craig’s desk chair, exhausted even with his ever-present thermos in hand. His backpack was already overflowing with papers, and it took him a long, frantic moment to find the assignment crammed between the pages of their textbook.

“We’re on linear equations, right?” Craig said, careful enough that it sounded fake in his own ears. He had thought he’d gotten better at being supportive or whatever at some point in the last five years.

“Yeah.”

Craig rose from his bed—it was weird, now that he thought about it, that Tweek hadn’t just joined him there in the first place—to look over Tweek’s shoulder at the assignment. It was instantly and inherently boring, but Craig got it. He inhaled, then brought out that fake voice once again to say, “Well, what aren’t you getting? This is just graphing, so it really shouldn’t take long once we know—”

“I didn’t come here for fucking tutoring,” Tweek snapped.

“I didn’t really plan to spend my night doing this, either,” Craig snapped back, automatically, “or I could not if you’re going to be an asshole.”

Craig could feel the heat radiating Tweek, and _that_ he could handle. Tweek and him know how to fight shit out, and when they’re both exhausted and possibly bloodied, it’ll be easy to just call things even between them and move the fuck on.

Except when Tweek turned to face Craig, it wasn’t to punch him—which was probably, objectively, a good thing, what was cute at nine became less cute the closer they got to being men, which was still kind of a weird thought for Craig—but to say, “How am I the asshole!?”

“How are you— Well, you’re trying to exploit free labor from me, to start—”

“Well, my bad for thinking we were friends—”

“—and you’ve been treating _me_ like the asshole after _you_ decided to tell Token and Clyde that you did _‘stuff,’_ like we’re in kindergarten—”

“Oh my fucking god, nothing ever fucking happened—”

“Obviously!” Craig said, ignoring the relieved loosening somewhere in his chest.

“—but maybe it’s kind of fucking embarassing that my ‘boyfriend’ doesn’t want to—” Tweek cuts himself off and looks away from Craig, and it drives Craig crazy, makes him want to push Tweek up against a wall, shake him until whatever bug has crawled into his brain this week falls back out, but he doesn’t have to wait. The words came out like they were being spat out of an unlidded blender. “It’s just like, isn’t this whole thing played out if everyone is convinced we have bed death in high school? That’s not a happy ending for anyone! That’s not true love. And I know that’s never really been the point for us but I think we've probably played our part for long enough. We probably deserve to be with people we’d finger in the middle of health class. Or want to— or…” 

He exhaled a throated scream, his fingers reflexively reaching up to tug painfully at the hair at his nape as his eyes dropped back down to the floor. Craig’s hand twitched to follow, but he kept them at his side. He asked, “Are you seriously dumping me because you want to see other people?”

Tweek and him have broken up a dozen times before, usually for stupid reasons, but the acrid knot coiled in Craig’s stomach felt just as real every time, especially when Tweek looked up at him again like Craig was the stupid one. “What, like you don’t have someone you’d rather be with?”

“No,” Craig replied automatically.

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t like people in this town, Tweek, that’s not news.”

“Well, it’s still not the same. And don’t act like you don’t fucking know what I’m talking about!”

Craig chewed on it, frustrated, but playing stupid did go against everything he believed. Being with Tweek had always been a shield between him and the frantic game of musical chairs that was always swirling around them. He tried to imagine having anyone else in school where Tweek stood—in his bedroom at night, every morning, with his family—and if that wasn’t repulsive enough, he then pictured him as one half of those couples who made out at each other’s lockers between classes, or, worse, them again in his own bedroom, trying to turn rumors and porn into something real.

Tried to imagine Tweek in the same places, doing the same things with someone else, and his body got hot and cold and hot again so fast it made him a little nauseated. 

“Do you?”

Tweek’s face contorted and flushed. “Do I what?” 

“You _just_ told me to not—” Tweek’s face got even redder, but Craig didn’t let him look away. It wasn’t the first time Craig touched Tweek’s face, but it felt like it, like this was a different way from hands to be on someone else. He could feel the heat beneath his fingers, Tweek’s thick fucking skull.

It wasn’t the first time they kissed. The first time had been awkward and short, and so was their second attempt, but this time when Craig pulled back, he felt a heavy weight settle in his stomach as he stared back at Tweek’s flickering eyes. 

Craig wanted to do it again, so he did. Tweek kissed him back and Craig could feel the nervousness in it, the uncertainty, the sheer _what-the-fuck-are-we-doing?_ It felt like he was discovering a new definition for good in the feeling of Tweek’s hair between his fingers, his neck, how Tweek touched him back, jolting from Craig’s arms to his chest to his jaw.

When they finally break apart, Craig’s chest aches from lack of air. His kneecaps were digging into the floor—he’d wanted to be closer but now he felt tight, closed in, bursting at the seams. He leaned back and up.

“Craig—” Tweek said, and he sounded out of breath, too.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

The hallway was empty, but Craig still ran awkwardly into the bathroom. He considered taking a cold shower but instead took a hot one and thought about Tweek and porn—the normal stuff then jerk off videos and then two, side by side—and then Tweek again. It felt shortsighted suddenly, that Craig never considered what it all really meant either way, after everyone decided he was gay without any input and this whole thing with Tweek started up.

His blood didn’t feel much cooler afterward, but his head felt clearer. When he returned, Tweek had relocated onto his neatly made bed, lying there equally conspicuous. 

“Did you jerk off in my room?” Craig asked.

Tweek looked caught, but also conspiratorial, like maybe they’re caught in something together. Craig fitted himself back against the wall, legs crossed. “Do you still want to break up?”

“I didn’t _want_ to break up,” Tweek corrected. His left leg jittered beneath Craig’s.

“Okay,” Craig said. “Well. Are you sufficiently satisfied to not do it anyway?”

“Do you want to... do this sorta thing again sometime maybe?” More jittering. Craig wanted to put his hands on Tweek’s legs. He felt once again that he couldn't look at Tweek head-on, like some balloon had expanded in his brain and pushed forward things that were more easily kept in the dark. It was Tweek—was everyone really right about them? Had he always, deep down, wanted this? Shouldn't he have _known_ what wanting to date-date or hook up with or keep someone in his bedroom forever felt like?

He forced himself to look. It wasn't like staring into the sun. Tweek still looked skinny, sleep-deprived, disheveled despite his best efforts. He was even looking back at Craig, even though it seemed to pain him.

“Sure,” Craig said. 

“Okay,” Tweek replied, sounding relieved, and _that_ loosened another hidden knot in Craig’s chest, if hidden was even the word for it. Untangling Tweek had crossed over from something that needed doing so Craig could bear keeping up the act to something almost like a need, like Craig himself was knocked askew when they weren’t both in line. He couldn’t imagine letting someone else take over.

Instead of saying any of that, Craig warned, “Don’t go bragging about shit just because Clyde or Kenny or whoever are fucking annoying,” and then watched as the corner of Tweek’s mouth twitched upward, and it felt like figuring this all out could wait. They already were what they needed to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title ripped from The Modern Lovers song. A little on the nose but here we are:
> 
> _If you care about me now (Tell me now)  
>  If I'm better than the wall now (Tell me now)  
> If it's important when I touch you're hand (Tell me now)  
> If you care about being alone at all (Tell me now)  
> If it hurts, to be alone in your kitchen  
> The way you've been staying over these past few months (Better tell me now)  
> If it hurts to not be honest with yourself  
> The way you have been the past few years it seems (Then tell me now)_


End file.
